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What has happened to businesses across the world, and in particular in developing countries during the past few months? How have businesses managed to deal with the crisis? I open a 
In developing countries timely information is scarce & decisions have to be taken without sufficient data. In these last few months joining forces across the World Bank and counterparts we have been remotely collecting information on more than 140,000 businesses in 60+ countries
Information obtained from these surveys can be accessed online here ( http://bit.ly/3bhDa1x ) and some of the findings from these data have been summarized in this article just published ( http://bit.ly/37qkThi ). What are the main findings?
First, as discussed by @CarolineFreund ( http://bit.ly/3uaidhB ) the shock has been very large and persistent with sales down by 50% during the first 3 months and still 27% lower 6-9 months later. These averages are misleading for various reasons.
(1) 10-15% of businesses managed to keep sales unchanged or even expand them, additionally, the impact has been very different across sectors (hospitality being extremely badly hit); (2) smaller firms have been hit much harder http://bit.ly/3ucupyz
Second, uncertainty is off the chart everywhere but in developing countries uncertainty is multiple times that of countries such as US ( http://bit.ly/3auFjYl ). This is worrisome because uncertainty leads to more firing & is likely to reduce investments, innovation & risk-taking
Third, there is a potential silver line & this is the accelerated digitalization of firms, but smaller firms are lagging and this could lead to increasing inequality.
Also as shown by @johnvanreenen @raffasadun @I_Am_NickBloom digital investments need to be complemented by organizational changes to be effective ( http://bit.ly/3u6QKg ). Is this happening? What about investments in management and organization? We need more data on this
Finally, what about policies? As discussed here ( http://bit.ly/3dpFSos ) governments have been very active, but disparities are widening as firms in richer countries are 5 times more likely to have received some form of support, and within countries smaller firms are lagging
While policy targeting was pretty successful at sectoral level with firms in sectors hit harder being more likely to receive support, however at firm-level there are clear signal of mistargeting
Significant # of firms received support even if they had not experienced any negative shock and an even larger share of firms with large revenue drop had no access to policy support. Mistargeting is bigger in countries with weaker governance ( http://bit.ly/2M1ecLc )
Those interested in the headline results see http://bit.ly/3k0zqW4 . Those who want to dig deeper in the data check the dashboard http://bit.ly/3bhDa1x . Those who want to read directly the research findings check the papers http://bit.ly/3ucupyz & https://bit.ly/2M1ecLc
Too many people to thank and acknowledge for a detailed list of people and institutions involved check http://bit.ly/3ucupyz - @CarolineFreund @DenisMedvedev @jelopezcordova @elwyndavies @marciojvcruz @xcirera @Gaurav__Nayyar @dmckenzie001...
